Archive for the ‘Microsoft Xbox One’ Tag

“Grinding for purple ammo packs will soon become a thing of the past, if VG247 sources are to be believed. Update: Bungie has denied it’s to allow players to buy ammo packs, telling Game Informer, “We’re not doing that.” Original st…”

Okay, this kind of news doesn’t surprise me at this point. We live in an industry where people just eat this up because they think they’re robbing the publishers out of their money. Don’t worry about the developers, by the way, the publishers are the ones screwing them over!

Okay, I might seem to be going off topic for a little bit, but bear with me, there’s a reason for this:

I’ve been really involved with political stuff for the past couple of years, what with the Scottish Independence Referendum and all. I’ve noticed that the current governments are basically sucking up the the super rich and banksters, telling us that if we gave their money to them, it will trinkle down to us, making our society and way of living much better… it hasn’t… at all…

What has really happened is that the money has stayed with them, and combined with the fact that these guys dodge their taxes and pay just about nothing back into the country, we are left far worse off!

I found a picture on Facebook some time back that sums it all up perfectly. I cannot find who original done this picture, Tineye returned nothing and Google Images only showed a bunch of Twitter Tweets, none of which suggested that it was the original and not just a share. So I apologise in advance for not giving the author credit, because I don’t know who the author is! I digress though, here it is:

Does any of this ring a bell? Have you ever been told “The developers need their money!” or “You buy your games used/borrowed it/Had it given to you, and screwed the publishers out of their money?!”, I certainly have! Maybe there’s a connection here!

I agree that developer should get money for their work, but there’s a fine line between supporting developers, and outright sucking their dicks and eating out of their arseholes kneeling before them and kissing the ground they walk on!

Let’s take a pre-Steam/Origin/Uplay/- You know what, let’s face facts, Steam/Valve have a monopoly on PC gaming, so a pre-Steam game as an example: Resident Evil 4. It’s widely considered as one of the worse PC ports of all time. It had no mouse control, it was capped at 30fps, the textures were god-awful, and the cutscenes were just pre-recorded videos! However, the game worked out of the box! No patches were necessary to play through the game! I had never encountered any errors or crashes, and no game-breaking glitches! What’s more, the DRM was just simple disc-checks, and I has no issue with that!

Let’s go back to the present day with an example from a game from these days: Killer Is Dead: Nightmare Edition. Kind of an appropriate title if you ask me! I’m just going to leave this here! Read as much as you like! I has this issue out of the box, and it seems everyone has had it since launch, since like 2012, yet there has still yet to be a proper fix for it!

What about Batman: Arkham Knight, a port so bad, that they had to recall all copies sold, all digital ones anyway, to “fix” it?

What about the War-Z? Anyone remember that?

What about every Assassins Creed game past the first? Or Watch Dogs? Or Ridge Racer Unbounded?

Okay, I’m running out of examples of PC ports, as I thought they were more out there, I’ll be honest. Most PC games seem to actually perfect ports of games that were outright broken and glitch-y to begin with!

Actually, going onto games on all platforms, there’s more to be found there, games in general seem to constantly cut corners and are released buggy as anything, and need massive patches to fix them! Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 and the WWE 2k games are good examples of this!

Sure, back in the day, you had things like Starforce and SecuROM, but at least games that had that were called out, and both DRMs died, and moreover, once you got past those DRMs, the games I played that had these (such as Ed, Edd an Eddy Mis Ed-Ventures and the Tony Hawk games), I had no issues with. It seemed rare to see patches back then, to be honest, because most games didn’t really need them, they functioned well enough and were stable. Some games did have small patches to fix the little that was needed to be fixed.

Playing most of these games may yield the same results as the games above, but at least that’s just compatibility issue, they weren’t made to work on today’s PCs, so that’s to be expected, and is understandable! Now, though, with games that are supposed to work for today’s PC, that still fail to run correctly, that’s inexcusable in my eyes!

I honestly think is the issue is that we just keep sucking their dicks kissing their feet regardless and telling them how important and special they are to us!

We need to cut it out! I think that because we’re forgiving them for everything bad they do, they think it’s perfectly okay to keep doing it, and what do you know? They do!

The reason the likes of SecuROM and Stareforce are no longer around is because we gave the publishers shit a very hard time for using them, so they stopped, but now with an (in my opinion) even worse DRM combined with games that are unplayable out of the box, we’re suddenly praising them? For fuck sake!

If your bank took half of your money out of your account and said it was because they needed the money to keep going, would you go “Oh, that’s okay, I understand, keep the money!”? No, of course you wouldn’t! So why is this any different? Because it isn’t money being taking directly out of your wallets/banks? Well, we ARE paying a lot for games that are broken, so yeah, we kind of are losing money to blood-suckers and not getting value for that money! Also, there’s Steam sales, which bankrupts everybody who takes part in them, and never play half of their games, if they even can!

I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone will listen to me, I mean this article is long enough as it is. I think the Games Industry is soon going to collapse into itself or people are soon going to fork money over for text files where the game should be and it will read “A game will be here soon, I promise!”, and still say it is justified because the developers need supporting!

If you are still reading, thank you! I hope you at least take what I said into consideration.

If it means anything, if I ever get to the stage if releasing commercial games or enhanced-commercial editions of games I make, I promise to be different! If I do something bad, I’ll be honest about it and admit to my mistakes if I make any! I treat games like a work of art, and the work of Yu Suzuki and David Cage show me that games can truly be art, a way to express oneself. In other words, I won’t be making games for the sole purpose of squeezing money out of people, if I make a game, I really want to make something, I mean I guess I see no harm in making a bit of money on the side, just as long as you get the value for your money. Which is why my first projects will be free, well, one of them is a little more complicated than that, but maybe it’s best to leave that untill another time. It’s not like I’ll ever get that far, though! I’ll try, though, mark my words! You are free to hold me to account for what I just said here!

Anyway, that’s enough ranting for one day! I’m glad that’s off of my chest! Again, thank you for wasting your time to read this! I hope added some things for you to think about! You are also free to disagree and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this as well, as comments or whatever! I don’t want to be living in an echo-chamber if you know what I mean…

I’m going to start this off with an experience I’ve recently had with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 for the PS4, which I got for Christmas. I found out that the game has this awesome feature where you can play career mode and you see other players playing through career mode as well, and some goals/missions you can even player co-op! It was pretty awesome, and a lot of fun. I got a PS plus trial just to do this basic, and not needed feature. Now that trial has run out, and now I have to fork out £4 a month or pay £15-£40 upfront to do this…

Seriously, Sony, what the f*ck? What happened to free online play? That was a massive advantage the PS3 had over the Xbox 360! The PS Vita even has free online-play, so why doesn’t the PS4?!

Apparently the reason is because they needed to compensate for their new flashy features they added such as watching other people play games or even streaming a game onto your console if someone else is playing and you want to, and also things like online cloud storage… okay, but what about people who only want to play online and don’t care about those features? They would be paying for sh*t they aren’t going to use!

I could understand back in the late 90s and very early 2000s where the Dreamcast and Xbox did this, because it was a new thing, and I’m guessing doing things like that was expensive, because you needed servers dedicated to the console, I guess, but by the time online play became more mainstream, it seemed like an obsolete idea. The PS2, Gamecube (whatever games it had online), PS3, Wii and Wii U all had free online, and the guys behind them were doing just fine financially, so why would it be needed now?!

Again, all I would want to do is use this cool feature on THPS5, but I have to pay for game streaming, live let’s play features and cloud storage just to do this?! I’m never going to use any of those features!

I remember when this thing was first announced, my friend, who previously had a 360, reacted to it like it was no big deal. I’m guessing because he was used to it…

That’s probably why Sony did this, they new thanks to the controversy with the Xbox One at the time, many 360 owners were moving to Sony, so they saw money in this, and decided to treat them as sh*t as Microsoft did for money!

Smart? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it good, though!

Let’s imagine a scenario where you can to pay some guy “protection” money, otherwise, he gets to batter you with a baseball bat. This goes on for years, and maybe the original guy stops this for one reason or another (e.g. he dies or got arrested), and then another guy jumps in and does the same thing. You’d be used to that treatment by then, does that make this behaviour okay? No, of f*cking course it doesn’t!

“But PS Plus is a good deal!” Not when you HAVE to pay for it for something unrelated to why it’s a good deal!

I’ll create another scenario for this argument, but I’ll tell this story differently, try to imagine you enter a shop because you are away from home and need the toilet. (You probably already see where this is going…)

“Hey,” you say to the cashier, “Can I use your toilet? I’m bursting!”
“Would you like to buy this deal we have going on where if you purchase this bottle of Mountain Dew, you get a free bag of Doritos!”
“No thanks, I just need to go to the toilet.”
“Well, you need to get this deal, otherwise, you can’t use the toilet.”
“What the f**k?! No! F**k off!”
“Well, I’m afraid you can’t use our toilets, so you can either leave the store or I’m calling the police!”

…Okay, both of those analogies are a little extreme, as online play in of itself isn’t a mandatory human right (Unless the internet access thing that was added to the list of human rights count!), and the consequences aren’t that extreme, but I got my point across, right?

Bottom line, paying for online is not needed! You’re a greedy piece of sh*t if you charge for it! F*ck you Sony, and f*ck you Microsoft! I’m not giving youse a penny for online play! *sigh*, I wish they still made the Call of Duty games or THPS5 for Wii U…

I took this while I was playing Sunset Overdrive on my Xbox One, and when I fast traveled to do a sidequest, what usually happens is my player drinks then passes out, but they become ragdoll then, and I was on a tall, curved structure, so this happened…Read the rest of this entry »

Anyway, I was waiting to get one for weeks from Tesco, who kept posting a deal about an Xbox One plus a certain items (a few deals came to shore) for a good price, we kept going in and asking if we can get the deal that was currently on, and every time, they said they were out, they advertised these deals for weeks, and we came in the first day one became available, and they were still out of Xbox Ones!

So I decided “F*ck it!”, and just got an Xbox One from Game. Not only that, I got that awesome looking Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare edition! Just look and admire it’s beauty!

Ain’t it a beauty?

I got 2 games with it, or rather were bought at around the same time, because what good is a console without games? I bought the game I bought the XBone for, Sunset Overdrive, the Day One Edition! Including it’s Season Pass! I also got Zoo Tycoon, becuase it was on sale, for £15!

It took me a while to finally install everythign right, but it was worth it, Sunset Overdrive is amazing! It’s like Jet Set Radio, with a Tony Hawk soundtrack, with a brilliant 3rd person shooter all beautifully blended together! I can’t reccomend the game enough, it’s amazing! It’s better than any original PS4 game, I might even go as far as to say I prefer the XBone because of this game, because I feel like I already got my money’s worth from the XBone, but still need my money’s worth from my PS4.
I haven’t tried Zoo Tycoon yet, but it’s installed on the console, so I’ll try it soon, and get back to youse when I do.

So yeah, I’m very happy with my purchase! and yes, I’m aware of the COD:AW code, but I sold that for £10, so there.

Like this:

If this post gets at least one reader (which it probably won’t, let’s be honest), controversy might follow, Steam fanboys will keep nagging and trolling me, throwing at me insults and complaints without taking 1 look in the mirror. (a.k.a. Steam) They all seem to do. I’m not trying to create a spark or trying to get an angry mob after me, I just want this off my chest, I am only laying out the facts for you, you can choose what you think of it after. As the Oracle from the Matrix once said: “You have already made the choice, now, you’re beginning to understand that choice.”.

I ranted here previously, about digital download games. Well, since then, my opinions have changed ever so slightly, I’m okay with services like GOG, not as a replacement to physical, but as a companion, for indie games and such! On the other hand, I don’t think I’ll want to buy any physical game that uses Steam, Origin or UPlay DRM ever again!

I’m not going to complain about Origin and Uplay, it’s pointless, as, let’s be honest, Steam inspired them, they’re just copies, Steam is the real culprit! It’s not just Steam either, it’s it’s fanboys, I’m sure there exist Steam users who are smart, and know what they’re talking about, I have a few freinds who are hardcore Steam users, and they’re okay. Most Steam users I’ve seen online, are a bunch of stupid, hypocritical, inconsistent ar*eholes! I’ll get to them later…

Steam and similar DRM don’t accept used sales. Now, I’ve seen a lot of PC gamers complain about the Origin, Uplay and the Xbox One (the latter not anymore) for doing this, when Steam has the exact same restrictions!

Steam requires an online verification to install games, Steam requires an online check-in every week or so (not as bad as Xbox One, but it still means you’re screwed if you lacked internet), it blocks used games, and companies have full and total control over what you can and can’t do with your games. They can even just take the game away from you, without reason, and you can’t have a say in the matter, and you can’t sue them either, because Steam have made it so you can’t do that!

I am willing to bet that this the main, if not the only reason more publishers have become interested in the PC, it’s a publishers wet dream to have full control over the consumer! Steam, and similar “services”, makes that dream come true!

When buying a physical game that uses Steam DRM, as my friend once said to me, and he makes a good point, the code inside is more valuable than the disc, the disc is useless, you don’t even need it to install the game, you can enter the code without the disc inserted, Steam will register it, and download the game. Once the code is used, you’re just as well burning the game, it’s that useful!

Worst of all, people want their physical games DRMed, which makes no sense whatsoever! Do these people want their physical games to become useless after the code is used!?

Steam also does nothing to stop piracy, it’s very easy to obtain a cracked .exe of a game, and a cracked client, even Gabe Newell apparently said that pirates are a “non-issue” (but used sales are!?), so all the Steam DRM does is forbid buyers from sharing their games, and it eliminates used sales. In other words, it punishes the good paying consumer!

You see, my point about the physical/digital debate is game ownership, where you own your games on physical, but not digital, it turns out, you don’t even own the game when buying physical, at least not if it has Steam, Origin or Uplay DRM. They’re licensed to you, and you know a fascinating fact about Licenses? They Expire! They are not permanent things, they can expire over-time, or it can be revoked from you for any reason. So esentially, when you buy a game from Steam or Origin, you’re only renting it, because you can’t keep it forever, can you?

Don’t believe me? You can read the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Like probably the majority of youse, I breezed through it thinking it wouldn’t concern me, and accepted, but give it an actual read, you’ll be shocked at it’s contents! More specifically, read sections 2.A and 2.F. Actually, Don’t bother! I’ve done it for you! I’ve even highlighted the important parts, because I’m nice!

2. LICENSES

A. General Software License

Steam and your Subscription(s) require the automatic download and installation of Software onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use the Software for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms) in accordance with this Agreement, including the Subscription Terms. The Software is licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Software. To make use of the Software, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.

…and here’s section 2.F:

F. Ownership of Software

All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Software and any and all copies thereof, are owned by Valve US and/or its or its affiliates’ licensors. All rights are reserved, except as expressly stated herein. The Software is protected by copyright laws, international copyright treaties and conventions and other laws. The Software contains certain licensed materials and Valve’s and its affiliates’ licensors may protect their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

You can say what you want about Microsoft, and I’m not a fan of them either, but at least their Games for Windows games doesn’t require an online activation, you only need it to play the game online (You can create an offline profile), and even then, the key is tied to the physical copy, not on any account. By the way, I’ve tried this with Street Fighter X Tekken, I turned off the internet, and installed it, and right enough, I had no problems installing and playing the game! (Where as Steam, which is clearly superior, reuqires online verification just to install it and you can’t do anything with your Steam games)

They even reversed the Xbox One’s DRM policies after complaints. What has Valve done when people complained to them? Absoluletly nothing!

It’s ironic as well, Microsoft are bad guys and Valve are gods!? Sure, Microsoft have their slip ups, but at least they make up for it later on, Valve just bury their problems and pretend they don’t exist, fooling the unsuspecting consumer, and it seems to have worked!

I’ve seen Steam users complain that the Xbox One stops the ability to share your software, the fact you are screwed without internet, and that it restricts it’s audiences to the very rich! When Steam has the same restrictions, when I see someone complain about Steam for the exact same problems, they seem to always put the blame on the user, and defends their precious Steam!

For example, when someone complains that they can’t share their games with another user, or use the game on another machine/account, here’s a comparison of what the average steam user says:

Xbox One: “Microsoft are a bunch of cheap, greedy b*stards! They just want more money, by treating us like criminals, taking away out freedom, and kills game ownership!”

Response to someone saying the exact same thing about Steam: “Fuck you! Do you want to give the game to another person and cheat the developers out of their money!?”

How many times have we heard both of those kind of comments from “PC gamers”? I see them a lot! They can’t have it both ways! Are used games good or bad? Make up your mind!

Also, in response to the latter quote, which I get a lot myself, I only give a DRM-free game away if the other person isn’t interested or ever plans on buying the game, either that, or I accidentally buy a second copy of a game new. (which is rare, but has happened a couple of times.) Either way, it wouldn’t make a difference to sales whether or not a gave it away or traded it in…

Steam users also seem to talk about installing games anywhere as an advantage, which is a very poor arguement! You can do the exact same thing with a DRM-free physical games, and every download client on this planet, in fact, I’d be scared if you weren’t able to do that with Steam!

What’s that? Steam has an Offline mode? Well, you need be online to go offline, having online as a requirement in order to use a feature you’re only going to use when you can’t get online… It really defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Also, I’d like to see youse try to install a disc game offline, you can’t!

Steam does achievements and leaderboards? So does Games for Windows, and even Raptr, which is an overlay for games, does something similar. I’m not fussed about achievements anyway, they’re nice, but they’re not something I need.

Really, the only great thing about Steam is it’s workshop, it makes installing mods much easier, and you can easily uninstall them, that, I have to admit, is awesome!

That however, doesn’t make up for everything bad about Steam, if I have to give up my digital right to make installing mods a bit easier… I’ll stick with the traditional method if you don’t mind…

I think everyone needs to wake up, and realize the PC is not the awesome platform it used to be, Valve are not the gods of gaming, they are killing the physical market, they are allowing publishers total control over us behind our backs! They are turning the PC platform into a corporatised rental service, if Valve were any better than EA or Ubisoft, and want to prove it, they would put an end to it all… because right now, getting a PS4 or even an Xbox One sounds quite appealing…

I used to love Valve, I have many memories playing the Half-Life games, and as much as I’d hate to admit it, I had fun with the Portal games and Team Fortress 2, but they’re destroying the very market that made them…

I just hope that Mortal Kombat complete edition won’t have any DRM, in fact, I reckon there’s a chance, I might do another blog entry about why right after this, yeah, some good news to drown out the bad, I’ll see youse then!

I just watched the new Xbox One Announcement, I wasn’t impressed. They apparently claimed that the new Xbox was all about the games, and they proved themselves to be complete liars! 90% of the time, they were talking about features that didn’t have anything to do with games!

To be honest with you, I’d be surprised that Microsoft even know what a video game is! Even the original Xbox creator said that the Xbox consoles now are painful to watch, and I agree with him 110%! I imagine it’ll only get more painful with their new Xbox One, as Microsoft are further floating away from gaming…

That’s another thing, Xbox One is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard!

One of the name given to the original Xbox (which I was and still am a fan of) to distinguish it from the Xbox 360, was the “Xbox 1”, and now we can’t use that! Thanks Microsoft(!)

In fact I don’t even want to consider the Xbox One as a games console, because it clearly doesn’t want to be one!

Here’s a video below that perfectly sums up my thoughts, it’s not made by me, but whoever made this video, I want to give him/her a high five! -Cobra!